Critical Review by Michael Sheringham

SOURCE: "Honours for a Mad Baby," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4669, September 25, 1992, p. 15.

[In the following review of Théâtre complet, an edition of Ionesco's plays edited by Emmanuel Jacquart, Sheringham surveys the themes of Ionesco's works.]

It is good to know that a rainy afternoon in Paris can still be enlivened by exposure to the world of Ionesco at the pocket-sized Théâtre de la Huchette. La Cantatrice chauve has been running there uninterruptedly since 1957, clocking up those eminently forgettable statistics, familiar from The Mousetrap—this many changes of cast, this many thousand performances, this many costumes, vases, antimacassars…. Still crazy after all these years, the Smiths chunter on in their amiably sinister way, the Martins play out theatre's sexiest recognition scene, the fire-chief, hit by recession, hustles...